History of the Mexican flag: from the Trigarante to today

The green, white and red flag with the eagle on the cactus seems unchanging, but its current design dates from 1968. Before it came religious banners, insurgent flags, the diagonal flag of the Trigarante army, the crowned eagle of Iturbide’s Empire and numerous versions of the coat of arms in the 19th century. This guide summarises that history based on the publication La bandera nacional (2017) of the National Institute for Historical Studies of the Revolutions of Mexico (INEHRM), whose pieces are mostly kept at the National Museum of History in Chapultepec Castle.

Before Independence

The Mexica, Tlaxcalan and Tepanec armies used pennants, banners and coloured cloths to distinguish their military leaders and their political identity; in the time of Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, each Mexica district carried its own banner. The Conquest brought Spanish insignia: Hernán Cortés’s banner, with the image of the Virgin, paraded every 13 August in the Paseo del Pendón, and from 1529 a flag with the Cross of Burgundy was used.

The insurgent flags

On 16 September 1810, at the parish of Atotonilco, Miguel Hidalgo took as his flag an oil painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe painted by Andrés López in 1805. That same night, Captain Ignacio Allende raised two flags of the Queen’s Dragoons regiment in San Miguel el Grande, in sky blue and white. One of them is one of the so-called «twins», captured at the battle of Puente de Calderón on 17 January 1811 and sent to Spain; in 2010 Spain returned them, one for five years and the other permanently. The INEHRM considers them the first truly Mexican military flags.

On 19 August 1812, José María Morelos created a white and blue flag on which the eagle on a cactus appears for the first time as a coat of arms, above a three-arched bridge representing the aqueduct of Valladolid, today Morelia, with the Latin word UNUM, the union of the Americans.

The Trigarante and the Empire (1821–1823)

After the proclamation of the Plan of Iguala in February 1821, the tailor José Magdaleno Ocampo made the flag of the Trigarante Army, the first with the colours green, white and red. Its stripes ran diagonally, with a gold star on each and a crown in the centre. According to the INEHRM, white stood for religion, green for independence and red for union. With it, Agustín de Iturbide entered Mexico City at the head of the army, ending the War of Independence.

On 2 November 1821, Iturbide decreed that the flag should have vertical stripes in the order green, white and red, with a crowned eagle, without a serpent, perched on a cactus on an island in a lake. The INEHRM considers it the first national flag with the order of the colours and the eagle on the cactus in its centre.

The Republic and the 19th century

On 14 April 1823, after the fall of the Empire, the Constituent Congress set the coat of arms according to the indigenous tradition: the eagle in profile, perched on a cactus, devouring a serpent, without a crown and with branches of oak and laurel. The engraver José Mariano Torreblanca made the first official design. The colours did not change again, but the coat of arms did: in a century of civil wars and invasions, each faction created its own version.

During the Second Empire (1864–1867), Maximilian of Habsburg used his own imperial arms. During the Porfiriato, the flag showed an eagle facing forward, devouring the serpent, surrounded by a classical laurel wreath.

From Carranza to 1968

On 20 September 1916, Venustiano Carranza decreed that the coat of arms should appear on flags again in a new design by the Michoacán artist Antonio Gómez: the eagle in profile, its wings in an attacking stance, devouring the serpent, with the words «Estados Unidos Mexicanos».

The first Law on the Features and Use of the National Arms, Flag and Anthem was published in the Official Journal of the Federation on 17 August 1968 and brought together the scattered provisions on the national symbols in a single text. It set the design the flag has kept since September 1968.

The 1984 law

The current law, submitted by President Miguel de la Madrid, was published on 8 February 1984, repealed the 1968 law and entered into force on 24 February 1984, Flag Day. In 1995 the rule on the eagle on the reverse was added; in 2018, the rules on the presentation of the flag, private use and sanctions; and numerous amendments, from 1991 to 2025, have changed the flag days in article 18. In 1999, a decree entrusted the Ministry of National Defence with the monumental flags, which have since shaped the skyline of many cities.

Famous flags

The National Museum of History keeps flags with a history of their own. That of the San Blas Active Battalion, with its colours reversed and traces of the blood of its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Santiago Xicoténcatl, killed in the defence of Chapultepec in 1847, has been the museum’s official emblem since 1947. That of Squadron 201 of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force, which fought in the Philippines in 1945, is according to the INEHRM the most decorated Mexican flag. The guide to flag symbolism explains its elements, and the guide to flag days lists the anniversaries of this history.